Summilux-R
35mm f/1.4

The Summilux-R
35mm f/1.4 is an ultra high speed wide angle lens with a 64°
angle of view. It has 10 elements in 9 groups. It has been specially
designed for photography in poor lighting conditions. It is therefore
particularly well suited for work in available light.

Even at full aperture
it has a high contrast performance and good detail rendering
in the center of the picture and in a large portion of the picture
area. Falling-off of definition towards the margin occurs only
close to the extreme corners of the picture and is reduced by
stopping down.

The lens also performs
extremely well with subjects of high contrast (e.g. in contre
jour light) and even light sources included in the picture do
not produce disturbing reflections. Coma is practically absent.
Distortion is respectably low for such a high-speed wide-angle
lens and shows a hardly noticeable increase of barrel distortion
in the near-focusing range.

Because of its
floating elements the Summilux-R 35mm f/1.4 produces a very flat
picture area also in the near-focusing range (0.5m). From f/5.6
flat objects, too, are reproduced sharp from corner to corner.

The lens suffers
from inherent vignetting at large apertures, which becomes noticeable
especially with slightly short exposures and evenly bright picture
areas, e.g. the wall of a house or the blue sky, and is therefore
not disturbing in the useful range for which the lens has been
designed: in available light. It is practically eliminated at
medium stops.

In spite of the
large filter diameter of E67 the use of a relatively thick, rotable
circular polarizing filter cuts the edges of the picture (vignetting).
This is visible even in mounted transparencies, and the use of
such a polarizing filter is therefore not recommended.

The French photo magazine Chasseur
d'Images awarded this lens 3 stars for optical performance (their
test system penalizes lenses with large f-stops; star results
can only be compared among lenses within the same f-stop category).